I Feel the Earth Move

At 7:16 yesterday evening we experienced our very first earthquake. I was cleaning up after supper and Dustin and Theo were playing the Wii when the apartment started to sway, the windows rattled, and the bookshelf and microwave stand threatened to topple. It is maybe fairly indicative of the part of the world I am from, but at first I thought there was a tornado outside of our apartment. It took me half a second to realize that was pretty ridiculous and that it was in fact an earthquake. By this time our cell phones, which have a built in earthquake warning alarm, went off. The shaking lasted for about 10 seconds or so and was relatively gentle. Theo looked around puzzled for a second or two, shrugged his shoulders, and then focused all of his attention back to Kirby. I suppose it is better than being freaked out.

The epicenter was about 80 kilometers north west of us near the border of Hiroshima and Shimane Prefectures.
We live in a relatively stable part of Japan for the most part, so we were pretty surprised last night. It was just the extra push I needed to get an emergency preparedness kit packed and ready for the future.